


An Inter-Office Affair

by gogollescent



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, just think they're only 4000 years old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt "Crowley throws a party, and Aziraphale crashes it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Inter-Office Affair

The year was 15 AD, the geographical constraints “not Nazareth”, and weddings were the best fun to be had anywhere, assuming anywhere wasn’t a funeral. Crowley, being rather attached to his current body and disinclined to fake rigor mortis while still in it, had accordingly contrived to be married. 

His bride was a wealthy widow who regularly gave to the poor, treated other people’s children kindly, and had clout in the community. In short she was overdue a possession by almost a lifetime. Crowley was hoping to see her stoned, but he would settle for making her a permanent  _persona non_   _grata_  among the people she’d formerly loved. Religion could be so handy, if you didn’t mind hanging out with priests. And Crowley had had a taste for theology since Greece.

But that was all in the future. For now, he was going to enjoy the party.

He’d invited a number of minor fiends: personable chaps, by and large, though inclined to steal bodies rather than wrangling with the Management for them, and therefore prone to dinging off fingers on the  fashionable furniture. Fortunately all the humans were far too drunk to be leper-shy— a state of affairs which in turn of the dating-system Israel required some doing, but then, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Peace and love and his bride’s corporeal form soon to be donated to the highest bidder[1]. Crowley leaned back against the wall beside a potted fig tree[2], and felt remarkably good. 

Until he saw Aziraphale hobnobbing with Legion, that was.

He stared, incredulous, as the angel threw an arm over the disjointed shoulders, leaned in to the greenish ear, and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, “You simply  _must_ try the palm wine, Crowley has exquisite taste— and if I don’t miss my mark, not a drop of this was camel piss yesterday!”

Legion, who had never drunk anything stronger than the blood of innocents in their life, rotated one eye in clear distress. Aziraphale had probably been talking about blackberry overtones to them the whole time Crowley had been wallowing in self-satisfaction. It was simply unacceptable.

He came over. Aziraphale smiled at him, rather glassily. “Hullo, Crawly,” he said, eyes wide.

Crowley took him by the arm. “We’ll just be going now,” he announced to Legion, who was already beginning to buzz. “Don’t wait up.” And he dragged Aziraphale out back, to where the camels were not, in fact, making wine.

“How the Greek ideal of an afterlife did you get in here?” he demanded, letting go. Aziraphale retrieved his arm and looked dignified.

“I’m a friend of your wife’s,” he said.

Crowley stared at him. “No, you aren’t,” he said, flatly. “I vetted her very thoroughly.”

Aziraphale had the grace to look a little ashamed. “Well,” he said. “I might have been. And for all intents and purposes, I am now.”

Crowley threw up his hands. “Lovely!” he said. “I see how it is— come in here, sandals ablazing, is it, and trample all over my hard work without even so much as an ethical approach to telepathy in the bargain—”

“Really, my dear,” said Aziraphale, indignant. “I didn’t come to interfere. I know I may have done some, er, less than civil thwarting in my time, but I hope I’ve never overstepped my bounds, and with an inter-office affair… well.”

Crowley’s eyes narrowed. “Inter-office? What other offices? This is Earth! This is a  _me_ office!”

Aziraphale gave him a pitying look. “Perhaps I’m not the one you should be squeezing for information out back, then?”

Crowley stared at him. Then: “Stay right there,” he said, and marched back inside.

Aziraphale would have put his hands in his pockets if his tunic had had pockets. As it was, he settled for regarding the stars and whistling.

When Crowley came back, it was with two cups of wine and the smell of singed bees for company.

“Right,” he said. “Well. I suppose I…” He seemed to be choking on a verb. Aziraphale watched with interest. “Thanks for the tip,” he said, finally, having given up on the high psychological banks of ‘owe’. He handed Aziraphale a cup. 

“Not at all,” said Aziraphale, sipping at it. “Will you be carrying on with your little scheme even in light of Legion’s abrupt departure?”

Crowley looked wary. “Yes,” he said. “The others didn’t know anything about it, as far as I can tell. Promotion grubbing little collective consciousness…”

He trailed off.

Aziraphale nodded. “Good, good.”

“ _Good?_ ”

“I mean, er, bad, of course. But not mutually intolerable, I think. Did you know that she poisoned her last husband?” he asked, gesturing toward the interior of the house. 

Crowley choked on his wine. 

“Oh yes,” said Aziraphale, pleasantly. “Rather a sad affair— apparently she found him, what was it? Too controlling.”

He patted the demon on the shoulder.

“Best of luck, of course,” he said, and having finished the offered wine, took gleeful flight. The muscular spray of feathers knocked Crowley clean off his feet. When he sat up, Aziraphale was gone, although he’d left the cup behind. 

[1] Demons in general do not have a solid linguistic grasp of the whole concept of donation. 

[2] An anachronism, but one Crowley felt he had earned, after all that business with pushing around the flyby date of Halley’s Comet. 


End file.
